Identification Parade

VINYL FORMAT. Drums vs. Drum Machines. Samplers vs. Guitars. Take these oppositional elements, add a willingness to start a band first and learn how to use the gear later, crank it up to 25,000, and that's somewhere in the neighborhood of The Octopus Project, who create a unique style of music for people who like the experimentation of progressive music, the blips and bleeps of electronic music and the raw animalism of rock.

The Octopus Project is the latest development between longtime collaborators Josh Lambert, Yvonne Lambert and Toto Miranda, filling the gap between electronic and rock musics. Having added drum machines, samplers and keyboards to their standard guitar/drums/bass setup, they just turn everything on at once and end up with what has been best described as "ambidextrous equipment failure junk-tronica." Perhaps something like the rock-plus-electronic sounds of IQU, The Flying Lizards, Stereolab or Cornelius, but way more rock (larger, rougher, more collar-grabbing). The recent arrival of Dustin Kilgore and Nik Snell, both of whom play various instruments, adds to the confusion on stage.